Director: Procurement

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Mayer Brown is an international law firm positioned to represent the world’s major corporations, funds, and financial institutions in their most important and complex transactions and disputes. We are recognized by our clients as strategic partners with deep commercial instincts and a commitment to creatively anticipating their needs and delivering excellence in everything we do.

We are a collegial, collaborative firm where highly motivated individuals with an unwavering commitment to excellence receive the opportunity, support, and development they need to grow, thrive, and realize their greatest potential while supporting the Firm’s client service principles of excellence, strategic partnership, commercial instinct, integrated strengths, innovation, and collaboration across our international firm.

If you enjoy working with team members whose defining characteristics are exceptional client service, initiative, professionalism, responsiveness, and adaptability, you may be the person we are seeking to join our Procurement department in our Chicago office, as a Director:
Procurement.

This position provides strategic leadership for the Firm’s global procurement and sourcing function with a mandate to deliver measurable commercial value – including cost reduction, supplier-driven innovation, risk mitigation, and operational efficiency. The Director:
Procurement will design and execute a global procurement strategy that optimizes total cost of ownership, increases Firm-wide leverage, accelerates contract velocity, and enhances the Firm’s ability to scale. The role requires close collaboration with leadership across offices and functions to ensure procurement decisions align with Firm objectives, improve financial performance, and support long‑term growth.

• Leads the development and transformation of a Firm-wide procurement and strategic sourcing strategy that aligns with financial, operational, and risk priorities.
• Partners with Firm leadership to ensure procurement contributes directly to margin improvement, cost discipline, and operational resilience.
• Establishes category ownership model with dedicated strategies for high-value/high-complexity categories.
• Implements triage criteria, self-service models, and process improvements that balance control with user experience.
• Builds preferred supplier programs and framework agreements that deliver recurring cost reduction through volume consolidation and strategic partnerships.
• Implements spend analytics and demand management capabilities to identify and eliminate low-value, unnecessary, or excessive spending across all categories.
• Implements strong policies, defined roles, and approval processes to enable consistent prioritization of procurement activities.

• Coordinates sourcing and procurement efforts across countries, offices, practices, and administrative functions to maximize total Firm buying power.
• Establishes global category strategies that deliver multi-year savings, mitigate risk, and capture economies of scale.

• Identifies, prioritizes, and executes opportunities to reduce Firm spend across major categories (technology, facilities, professional services, travel, subscriptions, office products, etc.).
• Works with stakeholders to eliminate low-value and unnecessary spend and redesign processes that drive cost leakage.
• Uses data and analytics to track savings, validate impact, and publish commercial performance metrics.

• Serves as the Firm’s lead negotiator for enterprise-level contracts; strengthens supplier performance, commercial terms, and service delivery.
• Builds a supplier relationship management (SRM) framework that drives innovation, accountability, and continuous improvement.

• Develops, implements, and enforces Firm-wide contracting standards, playbooks, and lifecycle management.
• Partners with Finance, Risk, IT, and Legal to ensure commercial…